# A question about edible vegetation **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 3, 2020, 3:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-about-edible-vegetation/854985 "2020-06-03T15:38:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2020, 3:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-about-edible-vegetation/854985/21 "2020-06-04T03:46:05Z")
> [@Ulfreida](#): > > If you’re lost in the woods without food, stay by a water source and light a smoky fire if safe, or some other beacon visible from the air. Wandering around trying to find berries is a really good way to stay lost. You can live a long time without food if you have water and shelter. Yep. Food is the least of your worries. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2020, 4:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-about-edible-vegetation/854985/22 "2020-06-04T04:16:46Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > If you are lost in the forest without food, dont worry about food. Worry about shelter, warmth, and water. And getting rescued. > the rule of threes: > > You can survive three minutes without breathable air or in icy water. > You can survive three hours in a harsh environment (extreme heat or cold). > You can survive three days without drinkable water. > You can survive three _weeks_ without food. Hmm, I thought it was more like two… Anyway, I grew up eating wild edibles for fun, and there’s lots that you can eat, but the calorie density of the typical forest is VERY low. I completely agree that you are best to focus on getting found, or unlost. And on shelter and water. ---
**Author:** ![Kedikat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ed655f/32.png) [@Kedikat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kedikat)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2020, 4:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-about-edible-vegetation/854985/23 "2020-06-04T04:24:05Z")
Edible is not always useful. You can eat a bunch of many plants to ease the hunger pangs, but get very little sustenance from it. Vegetation has a wide range of actual food value to humans. We just can’t usefully process a lot of it. Fruits are quite good for us. Our close genetic relatives eat a lot of fruits. We can pre process some vegetation to make it more useful to us as food. If we want to all go vegan. We need to be careful of what crops we want to use and how to process them. So we waste the least amount of land and energy to produce it. ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2020, 11:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-about-edible-vegetation/854985/24 "2020-06-04T11:50:06Z")
This past spring we noticed an edible weed growing on our property. _Alliaria petiolata_ (Garlic Mustard weed) is a biennial and requires two years to mature, growing as a small, leafy rosette in its first year and flowering in its second. Its roots produce a toxin that stops other plants from growing near it. I added young leaves to my hummus recipe and flash fried the stems. If I were lost in the woods and hungry I’d collect some garlic mustard weed and use it to garnish the rabbit I snared and roasted over my fire. ETA: [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/11/nyregion/garlic-mustard-evil-invasive-delicious.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/11/nyregion/garlic-mustard-evil-invasive-delicious.html) ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2020, 12:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-about-edible-vegetation/854985/25 "2020-06-04T12:36:13Z")
Garlic mustard is delicious, but I don’t know how much nutrition you’re going to get from it. And chocolate is only a little less toxic to humans than it is to other mammals. The problems with dogs eating chocolate are that, first, they’re smaller than us, and so a dangerous dose is correspondingly smaller, and second, dogs are renowned for a lack of moderation in their eating habits, and will, given the chance, scarf down ten pounds of chocolate at once. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2020, 1:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-about-edible-vegetation/854985/26 "2020-06-04T13:52:30Z")
The idea that plants were put on earth to satisfy the needs of mankind is a wildly inaccurate, arrogant and dangerous concept, despite its popularity among the Nature is Good crowd. There are numerous examples of fruits that are either frankly toxic, or require processing to make them harmless to humans (elderberries, for instance are fine when cooked, but eating a sizable quantity of raw fruit is likely to result in unpleasant gastrointestinal symptoms). Mrs. J. just made a terrific rhubarb crisp from stalks produced by our plants, but it would have been a really bad idea to eat rhubarb leaves. I suspect that much or most plant matter (leafy, roots or fruits) is edible at least as short-term survival food, but that the percentage shrinks drastically when categorized as both edible and _palatable_. \*trivia: as an alternative to starvation, some Dutch people during WWII ate tulip bulbs, which apparently caused G.I. distress. ---
**Author:** ![jz78817](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jz78817/32/1028_2.png) [@jz78817](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jz78817)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2020, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-about-edible-vegetation/854985/27 "2020-06-04T14:02:09Z")
> [@Jackmannii](#): > > The idea that plants were put on earth to satisfy the needs of mankind is a wildly inaccurate, arrogant and dangerous concept, despite its popularity among the Nature is Good crowd. > > There are numerous examples of fruits that are either frankly toxic, or require processing to make them harmless to humans (elderberries, for instance are fine when cooked, but eating a sizable quantity of raw fruit is likely to result in unpleasant gastrointestinal symptoms). > Mrs. J. just made a terrific rhubarb crisp from stalks produced by our plants, but it would have been a really bad idea to eat rhubarb leaves. IIRC it took cultivation/domestication in central/south America to make potatoes edible. ---
**Author:** ![kitap](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/b9e5f3/32.png) [@kitap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kitap)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2020, 2:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-about-edible-vegetation/854985/28 "2020-06-04T14:08:54Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > And travel prepared with emergency gear. A complete collection of Euell Gibbons’s books as well as a good plant key should be in your emergency kit. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2020, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-about-edible-vegetation/854985/29 "2020-06-04T14:56:32Z")
> [@jz78817](#): > > IIRC it took cultivation/domestication in central/south America to make potatoes edible. Not entirely true. [Many wild varieties are inedible, but some can be eaten.](https://www.cultivariable.com/instructions/potatoes/how-to-grow-wild-potatoes/) Cultivation certainly improved edibility though. > [@](#): > > Most sources describe the wild potato species as inedible, but that is not strictly true. Many are not considered safe to eat due to high glycoalkaloid content, but some species are just as edible as domesticated potatoes. Most species that have been tested have a fairly wide range of glycoalkaloid concentrations, so it is probably possible to select edible varieties even from species that often have unsafe levels. ---
**Author:** ![susan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/susan/32/17537_2.png) [@susan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/susan)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2020, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-about-edible-vegetation/854985/30 "2020-06-05T01:36:02Z")
Ask Chris McCandless about the “one simple rule” (which doesn’t answer the OP, but are people really credulous enough to believe this? are they enjoying a nice deathcap, poison ivy, tomato leaf, wolfsbane, belladonna ‘n’ unprocessed cassava salad?) ---
**Author:** ![SmartAleq](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smartaleq/32/163_2.png) [@SmartAleq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SmartAleq)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2020, 4:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-about-edible-vegetation/854985/31 "2020-06-05T04:56:02Z")
When you start researching which houseplants you shouldn’t keep if you have a stupidy cat who loves to munch on leaves you quickly become appalled at the sheer number of common plants whose foliage contains calcium oxalate, which causes bad irritation of mucous membranes and can cause death in sufficient quantities. I’m thinking it’s probably not a great idea for humans to try those plants either. ---
**Author:** ![jz78817](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jz78817/32/1028_2.png) [@jz78817](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jz78817)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2020, 1:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-about-edible-vegetation/854985/32 "2020-06-05T13:24:27Z")
> [@SmartAleq](#): > > When you start researching which houseplants you shouldn’t keep if you have a stupidy cat who loves to munch on leaves you quickly become appalled at the sheer number of common plants whose foliage contains calcium oxalate, which causes bad irritation of mucous membranes and can cause death in sufficient quantities. I’m thinking it’s probably not a great idea for humans to try those plants either. spinach and relatives have somewhat higher levels of it too, IIRC it’s what causes that “dry” or gritty feeling on your teeth after eating it raw. ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2020, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-about-edible-vegetation/854985/33 "2020-06-05T15:15:54Z")
> [@SmartAleq](#): > > When you start researching which houseplants you shouldn’t keep if you have a stupidy cat who loves to munch on leaves you quickly become appalled at the sheer number of common plants whose foliage contains calcium oxalate, which causes bad irritation of mucous membranes and can cause death in sufficient quantities. I’m thinking it’s probably not a great idea for humans to try those plants either. A neighbor of a friend once had a problem with his dog salivating copiously. I was next door visiting my friend and he came over, freaking out. In his house I saw a Dieffenbachia with a torn leaf. We took the dog outside and used a hose to rinse out the dog’s mouth. Then the guy argued with me about the cause of the dog’s problem. He said he’d had the plant for years and the dog chewed it previously without problem. I insisted the plant was the problem. The next time I saw my friend, she told me the guy had taken a Dieffenbachia leaf and rubbed it on his tongue, and now he believed me. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2020, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-about-edible-vegetation/854985/34 "2020-06-05T16:12:55Z")
> [@kayaker](#): > > The next time I saw my friend, she told me the guy had taken a Dieffenbachia leaf and rubbed it on his tongue, and now he believed me. [Common names for Dieffenbachia include dumb cane and mother-in-law’s tongue](https://home.howstuffworks.com/mother-in-laws-tongue.htm), both referring to the fact that eating it results in the tongue swelling up so you can’t speak. (The latter name supposedly from the fact that a long-suffering husband would shut up a nagging mother-in-law by sprinkling leaves in her salad.) ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2020, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-about-edible-vegetation/854985/35 "2020-06-05T18:21:54Z")
> [@susan](#): > > Ask Chris McCandless about the “one simple rule” (which doesn’t answer the OP, but are people really credulous enough to believe this? are they enjoying a nice deathcap, poison ivy, tomato leaf, wolfsbane, belladonna ‘n’ unprocessed cassava salad?) > **[How Chris McCandless Died: An Update](https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/chris-mccandless-died-update#:~:text=On%20September%2012%2C%202013%2C%20I,colloquially%20as%20wild%20potato%2C%20and)** > > Because many people regard “Into the Wild” as a cautionary tale, it’s important to know as much as possible about what really killed Chris McCandless. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2020, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-about-edible-vegetation/854985/36 "2020-06-05T18:36:11Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > [How Chris McCandless Died: An Update | The New Yorker](https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/chris-mccandless-died-update#:~:text=On%20September%2012%2C%202013%2C%20I,colloquially%20as%20wild%20potato%2C%20and) **Moderating** Please don’t post blind links. At least give a brief summary of the article in question for those who would prefer not to click it. (It would also have been helpful for the earlier poster to mention who Chris McCandless was, for those who might not be immediately familiar with the story. McCandless, the subject of the book _Into The Wild_, was a camper who died in Alaska, allegedly from mistakenly eating toxic seeds.) Colibri General Questions Moderator ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2020, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-about-edible-vegetation/854985/37 "2020-06-05T20:12:09Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > **Moderating** > > Please don’t post blind links. At least give a brief summary of the article in question for those who would prefer not to click it. (It would also have been helpful for the earlier poster to mention who Chris McCandless was, for those who might not be immediately familiar with the story. McCandless, the subject of the book _Into The Wild_, was a camper who died in Alaska, allegedly from mistakenly eating toxic seeds.) > > Colibri > General Questions Moderator Sorry, I tried to edit, but couldn’t. ---
**Author:** ![Kron](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kron/32/12444_2.png) [@Kron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kron)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2020, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-about-edible-vegetation/854985/38 "2020-06-05T20:52:00Z")
> [@puzzlegal](#): > > Hmm, I thought it was more like two… > > Anyway, I grew up eating wild edibles for fun, and there’s lots that you can eat, but the calorie density of the typical forest is VERY low. I completely agree that you are best to focus on getting found, or unlost. And on shelter and water. I went 14 days with no food. Only broke my fast because of concern from the family, but felt no negative effects at the time. I think I could have probably gone at least a week longer. To be fair, I also had a decent amount of padding. I lost more than thirty pounds over that time. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-about-edible-vegetation/854985.md?page=1)